There are currently 3.3 billion cell phones in the world, and the growth in cell phone ownership is not stopping. Portio Research predicts that 50% of the world's population will be using a cell phone by the end of 2009. Furthermore, cell phones are becoming more sophisticated with many different types of applications including, but not limited to, location-based services (LBS). A location-based service is an information or entertainment service accessible with mobile devices through a mobile network utilizing the ability to make use of the geographical position of the mobile device. The geographical positions of these mobile devices are typically determined for location-based services using global positioning systems (GPS) and cell phone tower triangulation, and in the U.S., every cell phone produced after 2006 is required to be GPS enabled. Location-based services is a huge market and many companies are looking at how they can provide these services. Various types of location-based services may be useful or appealing to cell phone users or service providers.
One such location-based service is a phone locator service. Losing a cell phone is a costly annoyance. Currently people are reliant on their phones more than ever, and cell phones often hold a large amount of information that can be sensitive, important and private to its owner. Furthermore, the cost of some of these devices has risen to $500-600. Approximately 20% of mobile subscribers in the U.S. have insurance on their cell phone that costs about $5 a month. When an insured subscriber loses a phone, they typically have to pay a $50 deductible. One of the top insurers in Los Angeles County replaces 400,000 lost or stolen phones a month. There is a tremendous need to help consumers locate lost and stolen cell phones to avoid paying for replacement phones.
A currently known solution for finding stolen cell phones sends a text message or email with the number of the thief if the thief switches the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card in the stolen phone. However, this solution does nothing if the SIM card is not changed. Other known solutions use GPS to track the location of cell phones. However, these solutions only track the location of the phone if the location software is turned on. This would enable a thief to turn off the software so that the phone could not be located. It would be highly desirable to have a novel method that could still locate the phone without the thief being aware of it. There are also several companies that currently provide ‘over the air’ contact backups automatically from a cell phone. However, these backups offer nothing to recover the phone if lost or stolen.
Another location based service that may be useful to cell phone users is a friends and family locator that enables a user to view the locations of friends and family members who also have the application on their cell phones. A currently known friends and family locator is provided by Loopt mobile. However, this method requires the application to be opened on the phone and only sends the recent location of the phone every 15 minutes to 2 hours. Furthermore, if the application is turned off completely, the current location information for the phone is removed from the system, location updating is suspended and the current location is no longer available to others using the application. Also, if the application is not used for a predetermined period of time by actually bringing the application to the foreground, location updating times out and the location information for the phone expires. Verizon also has a location product called ‘Chaperone’; however, this product requires the user to purchase a specific handset for this service, and this service is only available on a very limited number of handsets. Also, this product is geared mainly toward child protection.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for improved techniques for providing location-based services for cell phones and other mobile devices that do not require an application to be running in the foreground in order to function and frequently update the location of the cell phones.
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